The default icons in zmud/cmud are auctioned off to the highest bidder every year. 10 spots, minimum bid $1000. Last year they all sold the highest was like 3 or 4 thousand I think. This year its almost over with very few sold.

I think that Zugg's somewhat hackish programming style might be catching up with him… he has something of a disregard for precision in all cases, and trying to introduce things like threading in CMud without being incredibly careful under the hood is a Bad Idea.

MUSHclient isn't as superficially attractive as Z/CMud but it's much more robust and powerful under the hood. Having proper scripting integration takes off a lot of the barriers of using some half-grown home-designed language.

I'm not sure people actually care that much how well structured the underlying source code is for the app as long as it works. The thing is, like it or not, Zugg is facing stiff competition from all sides with free MUD clients that have finally become his equals. In some cases, his betters. There's also a growing trend toward more open sourced applications.

It's also possible it's as simple as he's sold all he's going to sell to an audience that isn't getting any bigger.

Right, people don't care about the underlying implementation, until the day it rears its ugly head and prevents you from doing something. That's what I meant: the fact that the underlying code is shaky is starting to catch up with the client and the more advanced scripting. I was following the development of CMud's scripting engine and it was very quickly clear that his new threads were a big problem waiting to happen.

I'd be curious incidentally which clients you think are equal to/better than his clients. I thought MUSHclient was better several years ago already (actually I bought it, not ZMud). It's true though that MUSHclient (and many others) being open source (and free as in beer) is a big problem for his pay client. Frankly, IMO, ZMud/CMud don't offer any advantages to begin with, so why pay for them?

I think your comment about a stagnant audience is pretty darn on the mark, though. :wink:

I started using tintin++ – mainly because I want something fast that has a slightly smarter interface than telnet (its input handling kind of, well, stinks). I used to be using KMuddy, but loading up all the KDE libraries under Gnome is kind of wasteful (not to mention rather slow the first time).

KaVir said:

And another growing trend towards mud-specific custom clients (I've toyed with the idea of creating one myself, actually).

Well, I would say the trend is a burgeoning one, not nearly on par with the number of free clients out there. But yes, I think this has to do with people getting tired of the limitations of a plain text interface. There are all kinds of reasons to have custom displays of even text information, without going to a full graphical game.

Well, I would say the trend is a burgeoning one, not nearly on par with the number of free clients out there.

Well free mud clients have quite a headstart (Tinytalk and TinyFugue were released in 1990, TINTIN in 1992, etc), so yes, "burgeoning trend" is perhaps a better choice of words.

DavidHaley said:

But yes, I think this has to do with people getting tired of the limitations of a plain text interface. There are all kinds of reasons to have custom displays of even text information, without going to a full graphical game.

Even "full graphical" muds display text (for names, communication, etc), just as most text-based muds have some graphics (although usually only ASCII graphics), so there's plenty of middle ground. Technically you could even have people playing the same game as either pure text-based or full graphical, depending on which client they used.

Even "full graphical" muds display text (for names, communication, etc), just as most text-based muds have some graphics (although usually only ASCII graphics)

That's not what I meant… :rolleyes:

The point is that an interface with only text is inherently limited for some kinds of information display, and that is what is frustrating people and pushing them to produce their own clients. It's not as if graphical games have no text…

I think I agree with Samson on this one. It's not really about the underlying code (not even it's stability or capabilities) so much as that there are plenty of equal or better free clients available and the target audience for his client has already bought all the copies they're likely to buy (overall, he may still get a trickle here and there, but when was the last time you recommended zmud/cmud to a player?) and those of us who might otherwise consider spending money on advertising through him just don't really see nearly enough benefit for the cost.. especially at the price he's asking…

It's also possible the MUDs that might have purchased those in the past, or would have considered doing it this time, already has enough of a playerbase that they don't feel the need for it.

I would say the MUDs or "companies" that could afford $1000 for advertising would probably already be at the point where they don't feel the advertising would do anything for them that they don't already have going for them.

If the price were more like $300 then I think more people could consider doing something like that. Once we open, as a startup game, I would gladly fork out about $300 to get such a (possible) head-start. I think for a non-commecial game, $1000 is a bit much, and really the commercial games probably have all of the players they could need.

I'm planning to spend probably about the figure of $300 for advertising when we go to open, and I think that's a reasonable price to be looking at.

It's not really about the underlying code (not even it's stability or capabilities) so much as that there are plenty of equal or better free clients available

I have to admit that I don't see why these are separate concepts for you. :wink: If a client is less stable or less capable than another, isn't that basically the definition of the other being better?

Why no, David, it's not the only way in which a client could be better than another client. Some clients might simply have a better mix of features than zmud/cmud (something like, even simply, displaying colors in a way that's more pleasing and thus qualify as better). Neither of those has anything to do with stability or capability. I'm not sure which part of that is so mystifying to you, but that would be why I specifically pointed out that I was talking about other than stability or capability. I suppose that features could be considered capability or that stability could be considered such a feature, but I hadn't intended it in that way. The main point is that other clients, which are free, offer the same or better quality and/or features, often with better support. (Which can also be considered a non-stability/capability means for a client to be better. What a separate concept…)